Received a phone call from a recruiter and after a 5 min discussion I agreed to take 30 minutes the following week to hear more about what he had to say and I would send him my resume in the meantime. On the next call he asked about my experience, reasons I would leave current company, etc, and he decided to move me to the next round which would be speaking with a Sr Recruiter a few days later. After my conversation with the Sr Recruiter, we hit it off and he decided it was time to have a call with the hiring manager and see if we clicked. The call with the hiring manager was a week later and went well. We just had basic conversations where I could tell he was seeing how I carried myself in casual conversation as well as some generic interview questions; strengths, weaknesses, etc. From there, he wanted me to speak with his boss, the VP. I spoke with him within a couple days of the hiring manager and we too hit it off. He asked some more in depth questions about me as a salesperson and had me describe how I would handle certain scenarios such as difficult clients, etc. From there he recommended we go into a face to face panel interview and continue the process.
For the panel I was given 1 paragraph of info saying I was meeting with a CIO for the first time and they had a neutral experience with Gartner, as well as a few key stats. When I got to the interview, the hiring manager played the CIO and the VP played the CFO (who there was no mention of being present in the scenario). The addition of the CFO was to see how you handle change. The Sr Recruiter was dialed into the conference room as well. The role play was difficult. They made you buckle down and see how you work under pressure. They threw up objections to almost everything as well as tried to guide the conversation into rat holes. My objective was to understand their business initiatives and priorities and leave with clear action items. Make sure you do a time check when you begin the role play to see how long they have allotted. Mine lasted about 20 minutes and I was drained by the time it was over. When we finished, they asked how I thought it went, and I told them I thought it was ok, not great, and they thought I did pretty well. From there we went into 90 minutes of interview including everything from situation handling to pitching something I had previously sold, to more personal things. I could tell they wanted to make sure I had work/life balance. When I thought the interview was over, the VP asked me to either explain, or draw on the white board, who I am, however I choose to do it. No further instruction. What? As I walked to the whiteboard, my brain already drained from the interview and role play, I came up with something that didn't make a ton of sense but then I had to explain it to them. I think this was, again, a way to test you on your toes and how you adapt to change. From there we wrapped the pleasantries and parted ways and they told me they planned to make a decision within the next week and a half. I left pretty confident that I did not do enough to get an offer.
The next day I spoke with the recruiter and he said he I did really well but at that point it was up to the manager and VP. I did the typical follow up emails to them and got a basic thank you one liner back from the VP. A week later I got a call from the hiring manager. He wanted to discuss how I thought I did, what I would do differently, and what my general thoughts were about the position. After about 10 minutes of talking and me thinking I was about to get the "sorry, we went another direction" spiel, he said he wanted to offer me the position. I was elated, albeit a little surprised. Something he said that resonated with me was that I am a professional salesperson, not a professional interviewer, and that shined through.
From there, I got a call back from HR and we discussed logistics of an offer as well as potential start dates. We had already discussed compensation ranges as well as potential start dates on previous calls so this was nothing new. It took what seemed to be an eternity, about 5 business days, to get a written offer in hand. They called me before sending me the offer and more or less wanted me to confirm I would be accepting the offer before they would send it over. He even wanted me to click accept within 30 minutes of him sending it. I assume they did not want to be used as leverage for me to stay at my then current employer. I planned to take the offer either way but found this a bit odd. After accepting the offer online, I had to fill out about a dozen forms which included background check etc. Even after accepting, they did not want me to turn in my notice to my employer until all the checks had cleared and they gave me the greenlight. This process was handled by a 3rd party and took about a week, which was way too long for what it was.